Amazon Dam

The Balbina Dam (north of the Amazon capital of Manaus)


It was just like yesterday. Okay, it was, in fact, yesterday (okay, Monday) that I went to the Plaza Hotel _ New York's answer to the Copacabana Palace _ and reported on a Brazil conference with President Lula in attendance. It was fun running into a bunch of reporters who I knew from Brazil: Josh, who I met in Rio and who just moved to New York in January; Claudia, who I met in Rio but who was just visiting, from Jersey City. Pedro was there, too, who I only met while covering Lula in Washington, but since he's a Brazilian, I'll include in the mix. It was a strange event, there was nothing being presented to investors that you couldn't download off the Internet from the various ministries's websites. And yet, there was the president of Brazil sitting through these powerpoint presentations, as if he had nothing better to do.

There were two things that interested me, though, both involving Dilma Rousseff _ who is Lula's chief of staff. Anyway, Rousseff, is apparently being groomed as Lula's sucessor, which is strange because she doesn't really have any political base that I'm aware of. She was part of the armed resistence during the military dictatorship, which gives her some street cred. But I don't think she was ever elected to any public office, instead she was usually a top aide kind of person. What I do know for a fact is that she recently had a face lift. It was all over the cover of O Globo's website. And what surprised me was how good she looked _ not on O Globo _ but in person. Apparently, she knows better people than Michael Jackson. I mean she didn't look that great, but compared to the way she looked before. Her face still looked a little plasticky but she had changed from a vaguely irrated burocrat who look I might liken to that of a constipated bulldog into a something approaching feminine. I don't know, she seemed almost attractive for the first time.

But that's not the really interesting thing. The really interesting thing was this film she showed after her long, boring presentation which in numbers and figures basically outlined how the government hopes to develop Brazil and open up the Amazon. She mentioned the Tapajos Dam complex in her presentation, but I didn' t give it much attention until I saw the film that followed her lecture. The film had computer renderings of all the dams (5) the government plans to put up along the Tapajos river. Now, the Tapajos is a really gorgeous river that connects with the Amazon around Santarem. In 2006 or 2007, I think, I had the good fortune to ride down the Tapajos in a boat with photographer Andre Penner. The beginning of the ride was beautiful as the sun set over the river and Alter do Chao there were some girls giggling in the front of the boat beyond glass where the pilot sat and we struck up a conversation, they studied nursing in Santarem and were going back to Itaituba for a wedding. Then it got dark and the ride got kind of dull, it was like 12 hours or maybe more. The river was really high so that when we docked at Fordlandia, an old ranch owned by the Ford company, the dock was totally submerged and the people standing on it seemed to be walking on water. We stayed at the best hotel in Itaituba, which wasn't much but it had a pool, about 5 yards long and I actually managed to swim like a kilometer in it one boring Sunday morning. We spent the next day driving along the Transamazon highway following the Tapajos all the way to Amazonia National Park. The driver had a CD of the Calyypso (another story, for another time) but only the first three songs played so we had to hear them over and over again, while a biologist argued with the driver over which soccer team was superior Remo (hers) or Paysandu (his), a pointless argument without end.

But I digress. According to Dilma the dams will only flood the river as much as they natural floods during high season. So if she is to be believed no massive reservoirs evicting settlers and Indians. And the government is going to build them as if they were oil platforms out on the ocean, coming in by helicopter, creating a minimal disturbance to the forest and then replanting the area so only the dam installations stand out. It was pretty impressive on film. I think all five dams together will have a capacity of 10,000 MW - which I think is pretty good. So what to make of this? Well, first of all, all these dam projects act like magnets for the hordes of poor settlers who roam the Amazon in search of opportunity. Dilma's argument seemed to be that by helicoptering in they will avoid this. But she mentioned the center of operations will be Itaituba and that town will certainly see a great influx of people thanks to the dam, whether there are jobs to be had or not. It will also create more pressure to pave the TransAmazon, which despite its grand name, is really mostly an overgrown dirt road _ something that gives it a certain charm. Then there's the fact that none of these places are completely inacessible anyway. People have a way of finding their way to the edge of these projects, setting up little shanties to sell drink, prostitutes whatever the workers might lack. There is also the question of tranmission lines which will cut through thousands of miles of forest just to get to some place where the electricity will be useful, which implies even more environmental degratation. Also having cheap electricity nearby will attract also sorts of industry, especially if there are any minerals to be mined in the area. And then there's what is always a given with these projects: all the over billing and kick backs which drive up the costs to enrich politicians.

Now, I'm a little torn here. I figure the Amazon is going to disappear anyway. There is no serious effort underway to save and economic growth implies lurching ever forward into the jungle. So why not get behind a project like this, that at least appears to be the product of thoughtful planning? Well, first of all, in Brazil (as is the case pretty much everywhere) things never work out like they're supposed to. Secondly, around the world people are pulling out their dams and Brazil is installing them. But aside from some scientists arguments that dams release lots of green house gases in the form of methane _ all the submerged trees rotting, it seems. There's no oil, gas or coal involved, just screwing up some beautiful rivers that no one much sees anyway cause they're in the middle of nowhere.

Now, all my Amazon research has left me at the point that I feel saving the rainforest is largely a romantic quest. I'm in favor of preserving it, but I know it's not the lungs of the Earth and some responsible scientists have suggested to me that they don't even think it's impact on the weather will be catastrophic _ that was kind of a shock to hear. All the carbon going into the atmosphere will certainly speed global warming, but with no serious effort to curtail industrial emissions, it's hard to point a finger. But I don't know, I think its a good idea to keep our forests functioning, maintain the biodiversity for science and general goodness' sake. When you pave paradise all you are often left with is a parking lot, the pink motel, botique and swinging hot spot don't necessary follow.

I am reminded about a wierd press conference I attended years back where some guys were proposing hydro-electric plants that did not cut off the whole river but only extended about a third of the way across using the natural currents to run them. They painted a pretty idyllic picture of rivers lined with a series of tiny little power stations. They shot themselves in the foot, however, when they claimed their chief scientist had devised a way of defying the law of physics to have more energy coming out of their turbines than was going in. No way could I write about that without an accompanying peer-reviewed study explaining how they managed to defy such a basic law of physics.

Another guy who was at the conference, Roger Agnelli, the CEO of Vale Brazil's super-large mining company. He was all GROWTH, GROWTH, GROWTH, the world is going to grow and people will need more things so, we may be in a bit of recession now, but the long term is promising - demand for natural resources will grow etc. etc. He made no mention of the finite nature of natural resources nor the accompanying environmental devastation and pollution that accompany this growth, but then he is a very rich and powerful man.

I think Brazil is missing a tremendous chance not turning the Amazon into a great big labratory for sustainable development. Sending armys of students to study science and implant practical projects, to educate the locals so the only there jobs don't involve slashing and burning. And so they can be better paid and better prepared for the 21st Century economy instead of stuck in the 19th Century. But I don't think there's the will to do this.

The film about the dams said that for every square kilometer developed, the government will preserve 100 plus square kilometers, which brings me back to the story I traveled to Itaituba to cover _ it was about how national parks and other areas protected on paper are actually full of settlers and illegal logging.